Her Own Toughest Critic
by jbn42
Summary: Anger can be a funny thing, especially when the focus of your anger is yourself.


**Author's Note:**I've been thinking about this one for a bit – my first story was a tag to What Remains – and this is my tag to The Runaway. This story is definitely in the context of all of my other stories, particularly Our Ghosts Stay With Us and 118 Days Later, as those two would, series-wise, predate this one. If you haven't and don't want to read those, the Reader's Digest version is that Wash and Taylor are in a relationship and have been since right after arriving in the past. They are hush-hush about it due to their command positions and the fraternization rules.

**Disclaimer is the same as always – don't own them, just borrowing, no profit here.  
**  
_If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles. – Sun Tzu_

Alicia roughly runs a comb through her wet hair, almost glaring at her reflection. She cannot abide the fact that Mira got the drop on her, and that she trussed her to a damned pole for the whole colony, Nathaniel and her soldiers included, to see.

Given their relationship, Alicia had been impressed by Nathaniel's almost entirely impassive expression at her stumbling out from behind the Sixer rhino. She saw his hand twitch on his weapon, but she also saw his eyes darken the tiniest bit, a sure sign of his anger.

While she knows that Mira and Carter both likely noticed his hand, she's almost certain that they did not notice his eyes. With as quiet as she and Nathaniel have kept their relationship, she guesses that she's likely the only one to know that his eyes darkening in that manner is a sure sign that his protective, possessive side is rearing its head. She can't help but wonder what fresh hell he would have unleashed on Mira and the gathered Sixers if Mira hadn't released her and the private captured with her.

Finishing with her hair, Alicia puts her comb on the bathroom counter and leans into the mirror. She eyes her split lip and the clotted blood, and then she pushes her hair back to examine the livid bruise, gotten when Mira hit her with the butt of a rifle, now covering much of the left side of her face. She rolls her shoulders, still sore from the pole, and twists around to look at the scratches and redness left on her upper arms and shoulders by the rough, splintering wood.

After dressing in her usual fatigues and tank top, Alicia pads into her kitchen. She pulls out a bottle of whiskey that Nathaniel left here last week, when he came over after recovering from his exposure to the memory-damaging toxin.

Feeling a simmering anger at herself just under her skin, she pours herself a rather generous glass of the amber liquid. As she's about to slam the alcohol back, she hears a light knock at her front door.

Irritated, she puts the glass back down and goes to the door, opening it. She's surprised to see one of her younger soldiers there. "Private?"

The young man blinks, clearly nervous to be here. "Lieutenant Washington, ma'am, Miss Marcos, she asked if she could see you."

He basically stammers the message, and, seeing that the kid appears to be about to shake himself right out of his boots, Alicia takes pity on him. "All right, Private. Is she still in the brig?"

"Yes, ma'am."

She nods. "Thank you, Private. I'll head over there shortly. Dismissed." She has to hold back a laugh as the kid salutes her and then bolts like a scared rabbit. Good to know she can still be intimidating.

Alicia sighs and closes her door. She has no idea what the little girl, Leah, might want, but she's curious. She goes to the bathroom and applies a little makeup to help cover her colorful bruise, and after pulling on her boots, weapon and jacket, Alicia goes out into the early evening.

The only unusual thing about her appearance, aside from her obviously split lip, is that she has her hair loose, flowing past her shoulders. She tried to pull it up, but she still has a bit of a headache from Mira's blow to her head. Her customary tight, neat ponytail immediately intensified the headache, so she pulled out the hair tie and freed her hair.

As she walks towards the brig, the events of the early morning are on an endless repeat in her head. She is livid with herself for allowing Mira to get the drop on her the way she did, especially after the Sixers all got the drop on both her and her soldier.

To her, it matters little that she managed to take out two Sixers and was pretty handily kicking Carter's ass when it happened. Years ago, back in Somalia, she let someone get the drop on her the way Mira did this morning. Thanks to that error, she ended up with three bullets in her body, nearly losing her life.

She shakes her head, as if that will dislodge the memory and its associations. Her arms wrap around her torso, one hand sweeping over the locations of the two scars on her upper chest. Either of the bullets that caused those marks could have killed her. It is only by some miracle that she still lives, though she knows that she almost didn't. Between blood loss and internal damage, none of her doctors really could say why she didn't die in the medevac chopper somewhere over Somalia.

"Sloppy," she mutters, thinking again of this morning. She can't remember the last time she got so wrapped up in a fight that she lost track of the other people in the area. She can admit, if reluctantly, that she let her desire to punish Carter for attempting to kill Nathaniel distract her. She'd been so intent on beating the hell out of Carter, she stopped watching for other potential dangers.

She gets to the brig and heads down the steps. She finds the two Marcos children in one of the cells, door open, with Reilly sitting outside. The boy, Sam, is asleep on the cot, but Leah is next to him, clearly wide awake. Alicia nods to Reilly as she gets to the cell, and she softly clears her throat, hoping to get Leah's attention without waking Sam.

It works; the young girl looks up, but the boy doesn't stir. Alicia beckons with her head for Leah to come out. Leah nods, and with a gentle pat to Sam's arm, she follows Alicia to the other side of the brig, where they can speak without disturbing the sleeping boy.

When they get out of earshot of the cell, Alicia turns and looks appraisingly at Leah. "What can I do for you, Miss Marcos?"

The girl shuffles her feet briefly before looking up, surprising Alicia with the tears in her eyes. When she speaks, her voice is barely a whisper. "I'm so sorry you got hurt because of me, Lieutenant Washington." She down at the floor, wringing her hands together.

It's the last thing Alicia expected to hear. She drops to her knees in front of the obviously distraught child. "Leah."

The child just sniffles. "Leah, look at me." When she looks up at Alicia again, Alicia goes on, "First of all, I'm fine. It's just some bumps and bruises. Second, it was not your fault. You did what you had to do to protect Sam, and shame on Mira and the rest of them for forcing you, a child, into that position. _They _are to blame for this, not you." Even as she says those words, self-recrimination echoes through her head again.

Instead of replying, the little girl throws herself at Alicia, wrapping her little arms around Alicia's neck. After a moment of surprise, Alicia hugs her back.

Leah steps back, eyes still damp, but now wearing a smile. "Lieutenant?"

Alicia lifts an eyebrow at her. "Yes, Leah?"

Under Alicia's gaze, the girl turns nervous again. "Can you take me to see the Shannons? Please? I know Mr. Shannon got beat up, and I want to tell him how sorry I am and to apologize to both of them for lying. Please, Lieutenant?"

After observing the girl for a moment, Alicia nods. "OK, Leah. Just there and back though." She straightens and motions to the girl to go up the stairs.

When they get outside, Leah surprises Alicia again by taking her hand. "Your hair is really pretty, Lieutenant."

Alicia quirks a smile at that. "Thanks. Yours is too, when it's actually clean." The little girl giggles, squeezing Alicia's hand. They head towards the infirmary, as Alicia knows that Elisabeth has Jim there, looking him over. As they walk, Alicia hears voices coming towards them, and she recognizes the voices to be Jim and Elisabeth's. She has Leah step off the path, and in a few moments, she's saying, "Hey," to the Shannons.

Later, heading back to her home, as much as Alicia tries to stay focused on the sweet encounter between Leah and the Shannons, her mind once again strays to the morning. She keeps replaying Mira's appearance on the scene over and over again. Mentally, she's trying to suss out something she might've missed that should have given her a sign that Mira was close.

By the time she gets to her house, Alicia is once again mired deep in thought. When she gets inside, her glass of whiskey sits where she left it on the counter. She sighs, first kicking off her boots and dropping her jacket, then removing her thigh holster and putting her gun back in the nightstand. Rolling her sore shoulders again, she walks to the kitchen and picks up her glass and the whiskey bottle.

Heading for the living area, she takes a sip of the bitter liquid as she walks and winces as it stings her split lip. After putting the bottle on the coffee table and flopping down on the sofa, she takes an even larger drink. She swirls the whiskey in the glass, staring at it in the low light of the room.

She's starting into glass number three, feet propped up on the table in front of her, before she hears someone at her door. When it opens without anyone knocking, she knows it's him. He and Guz are the only people outside of medical staff with access to her home, and Guz and the medical staff would call before breaking in.

She doesn't look up or acknowledge him when he enters. She knows he must be able to tell that she's in a less than stellar mood, because she hears him sigh and wordlessly drop his own boots, holster and gun by the front door. He comes over and sits on the coffee table, facing her and settling a hand on her lower leg. "I'm sorry I couldn't come over sooner. I had to talk to Malcolm about that damned box, and I needed to debrief the private who was taken prisoner with you."

She cringes a little at the thought of him picking the young soldier's brain about the day. "It's fine, Nathaniel. _I'm _fine. You didn't have to come over at all." She tries not to sound defensive when she speaks, but she can't seem to make herself look at him, instead continuing to stare at the whiskey in her glass.

He reaches out and takes the glass from her, draining it and putting it down on the table. He uses two fingers and tilts her head up to make her look at him. His eyes are intense, more so than she expected them to be. "Maybe you're fine, but I'm not fine, Alicia. Seeing you like that, knowing that any one of them could have killed you in front of me before we could stop them? Trust me. I am about as far from fine as it's possible for a man to be."

She blanches and pulls her legs up, wrapping her arms around them. "I'm sorry."

He looks confused at that. "Why are you sorry, Alicia? You don't have anything to apologize for."

She furrows her brow. "Of course I do."

"Explain yourself, Lieutenant." He pins her with his eyes, which roam over her split lip and the bruise on her face, darkening as they had this morning.

Instinctively, she pulls her legs even more protectively tight to her body, and her eyes narrow at his authoritative tone. She hates it when he gets like this over something that is far more personal than military. "Is that an order, Commander?"

Her voice is icier than she intended, and she can tell that it bothers him from the way he stiffens slightly. "It is now."

Her eyes lock with his. In an emotionless voice, she says, "Yes, sir. I need to apologize because I failed to keep my soldier safe, and I allowed the enemy to get the drop on me, not once, but twice. That young man could have been killed because of my screw ups." With her last words, she looks down again.

He is silent for a moment before reaching out and cupping the uninjured side of her face with his hand. "Alicia." She doesn't reply, so he brushes his thumb across her cheekbone. "Alicia, if anyone is to blame for today, it's me. I sent you out there with just one other man. We all fell for it, for Leah's story. But I'm the one who sent you out there without adequate backup. If you'd been badly hurt or worse, it would be my fault."

She looks up at him again, her eyes slightly softer this time, the similarity of this conversation to her earlier conversation with Leah not lost on her. "Nathaniel, that's ridiculous. We had no way of knowing that Leah was lying, and who wants to believe that a child would do something like what she did?"

He sighs heavily, continuing to brush his thumb along her cheekbone. "That's easy to say, Alicia." She opens her mouth to argue, but he just goes on, "And what did you mean by them getting the drop on you twice?"

She shakes her head, huffing out a breath. "When Mira hit me, and when the Sixers attacked us in the first place. I wasn't ready for them or even looking for them. There's no excuse for either. I just got sloppy. It's the kind of thing that almost got me killed in Somalia."

"Bullshit."

"What?" She raises an eyebrow at him.

"You heard me, Alicia. That's just bullshit." He slides his hand from her cheek into her hair, weaving his fingers into the loose strands. "You didn't get sloppy today, and you know that what happened in Somalia wasn't because you were sloppy then either. Especially on the latter, you were overrun, Alicia. No amount of preparedness would have changed things. It's a miracle that any of you in the unit survived that day."

He takes a deep breath, and neither of them bother to mention that he'd left them, her wounded, to chase after the soldiers who had taken Ayani and Lucas. It's something they both know had to happen. It doesn't bother Alicia in the least, but she knows it still eats at him sometimes.

Shaking his head, he goes on, "As for this morning, I talked to the private. He told me that he didn't see what happened, but that he heard the Sixers guarding him talking. They said that you took down two of their best men and that you were kicking Carter's ass when Mira showed up. They also apparently said that Mira was berating Carter, because if she hadn't gotten there when she did, you'd have gotten to a knife and killed him."

"But I didn't see her coming, Nathaniel. I didn't even watch for anyone else. I was too focused on beating the living crap out of Carter. I let my emotions, my desire to punish him, get the best of me. If I hadn't…"

He cuts her off. "If you hadn't, you probably still would have been taken, and you know it, Alicia. One against how many? Even you, the best hand-to-hand fighter I know, would have gone down. And if it hadn't happened the way it did, maybe you wouldn't still be sitting here."

She doesn't have a response to that. The truth is that she knows he's right, but she still feels upset with herself. After a moment, she says softly, "I know hindsight is 20/20, Nathaniel. But either way, I should have been paying attention. Fifteen years ago, I would have known Mira was there." He opens his mouth to argue, but she doesn't let him. "You know it's true. We none of us are quite as sharp as we were back then. We've let ourselves get too comfortable here. We feel too safe."

He shakes his head again. "No, we don't. This isn't Somalia. We don't have snipers and RPGs and brutal terrorists after us at all hours of the day. This is our home now, and we deserve to feel at least a measure of safety."

"But the Sixers…"

"The Sixers could have killed you and the private. They didn't. I'm suddenly thinking that there's something deeper going on, something that Mira and Carter are fully aware of. Not that I like to think about it, but really, Alicia, why _didn't _they kill you and the kid? And why did they let Shannon go and let him bring Sam back here?" He removes his hand from her hair and rubs it across his eyes, sighing.

A flash of realization hits her. "You think Lucas is involved."

"I think he has to be. That box isn't something that was Mira's. I'd stake my life on it. It has Lucas written all over it." He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "I think Mira told Shannon something, something he held back."

"What do you mean?" She lifts an eyebrow at him.

"I asked him if she'd said anything I need to know, and he just told me that Mira isn't a fan. But I could see that there was more. I'm pretty sure he doesn't exactly trust me yet." He gives her a game smile. "I want to know what's going on there. Mira's motivation clearly isn't bloodlust or rebellion. There's something else."

Alicia nods. "I agree. It doesn't make sense, how easily they let us go. And Mira clearly never intended to kill us, or to even leave with us still captives. If she had, she would have come with more troops, and she would have brought proof of life as opposed to having us physically there. It was all a show for us. Mira doesn't have the kind of training we do, but she's not stupid."

They both go quiet for a moment, and then he slides his hand back into her hair, pulling her forward to drop a soft kiss on her forehead. "So, are you OK, Alicia?"

She knows he's not asking about the physical injuries. "Not really, but I will be."

"Alicia…"

"Regardless of how well I was doing, and regardless of how it could have gone far worse than it did, I still let her get the drop on me. I don't like that, Nathaniel." Unconsciously, she rolls her sore shoulders again.

He frowns. "Turn to the side." She stares at him for a moment, but then she guesses what he wants to do, so she pulls her feet down from the coffee table and turns to sit sideways on the sofa. She feels him sit behind her, and then his hands are on her shoulders, rubbing them gently. She sighs and relaxes her upper body, letting him work. "You're pretty scratched up back here."

She nods. "Pole had splinters. It took Nurse Ogawa over half an hour to get them all out. Kid was lucky – he had on a regular t-shirt. He only got a few."

He hits a sore spot in one of her muscles, and she hisses. His hands stop moving, and a second later, she feels him brush a soft kiss across the offended area. "Sorry about that."

Turning her head to look at him, his face still near her shoulder, she gives him a soft smile. "It's OK."

He leans forward and presses a gentle kiss to her lips, careful not to put too much pressure on her split lip. When he pulls back, he leans back into the sofa, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her, still sitting sideways, into his lap. He presses her tight to his chest, burying his face in her hair, muffling his voice. "It took everything I had to keep my cool when they pushed you out from behind the rhino this morning. And then it took everything I had left not to put a bullet in Carter's forehead when he pointed his gun at you."

She turns into him, wrapping her arms around him. "I knew that. I could see it in your eyes." She yawns and nuzzles her face into his neck. "I'm tired."

Without replying, he slips one arm under her knees and the other around her back, standing up and taking her with him. She doesn't protest as he carries her to her bedroom. He sits her down at the foot of the bed and pulls down the covers for her as she wriggles out of her fatigues, leaving her in just her tank top and panties.

She stands up and moves to the head of the bed, crawling in. He bends down and drops a kiss on her forehead, and then he pulls back and runs his hand through her hair. She reaches up and wraps her hand around his wrist, clearly surprising him. "Stay, Nathaniel."

He furrows his brow and sits on the edge of her bed. "Are you sure, Alicia? Remember, staying over increases our risk of people finding out."

She takes his hand and entwines their fingers. "I don't care."

He looks at her for a moment longer, and then he nods. "Be right back." He gets up and leaves the room, and she sees lights go off in the living room and hears the clink when he deposits her whiskey glass in the sink. He reappears in her room, closing the door behind him and turning off the light. The room is mostly dark, the only light coming from a path light outside the window.

She hears the soft rustle of fabric and she turns over to watch him as he removes his fatigues and t-shirt. Down to his boxers, he climbs into the bed on the opposite side. He reaches out for her, and she goes willingly, turning over and nestling into his bare chest, seeking his warmth. He chuckles softly. "You know, I'd love to see the looks on people's faces if they were to discover how much the very scary, hard assed Lieutenant Alicia Washington likes to snuggle."

She pokes him hard in the side, but she laughs quietly as she does. "What can I say, you're warm, and I'm always cold."

"Oh, I'm well aware. Your hands and feet are like ice." He jumps a little as she purposefully reaches around him and lays her palm out flat on his lower back and slides her foot up his calf.

"Sorry," she says, her lack of sincerity perfectly clear.

He hugs her tighter to him, growing serious. "I really did almost let myself get out of control this morning, Alicia. I can't lose you. I've already lost too many people that I love. I wouldn't survive losing you too."

"I won't make you empty promises, but I'll do my best to make sure that doesn't happen, Nathaniel. But you have to do the same for me," she looks up at him, "Because I wouldn't do very well without you either."

He nods. "And one other thing, Alicia." She looks at him expectantly. "Please stop being so hard on yourself. I'd say subduing two Sixers and then kicking Carter's ass is pretty damned good for a day's work."

She frowns a little and sighs. "I'll try, Nathaniel. You and I both know that I've always been hard on myself. It's how I survived at first, and by the time I got into the military, it was just habit."

"I know," he runs a hand through her hair again, "I never had to be all that hard on you during training because you were always so hard on yourself. You were the first soldier I ever trained who, without orders, would keep at something until you got it. I know that's why you're a better sniper than I am to this day."

She burrows closer into him. "I never wanted to disappoint you, Nathaniel. Disappointing you was just as bad as disappointing myself."

"Alicia," he reaches his hand down and tips her face up to his, "You've _never _disappointed me. You know that, right?"

She leans up and nuzzles his neck again. "I love you, Nathaniel."

He hugs her tight. "I love you too, Alicia."

He leans down as if he intends to kiss her, but she puts a restraining hand on his chest. "Even the soft ones from earlier hurt, Nathaniel. You're going to have to settle for hugs for now."

Laughing softly, he presses a kiss to her temple. "See, well done breaking the streak." She looks at him, puzzled, and his lips brush the tip of her nose. "The no kisses thing? Incredibly disappointing."

She smiles and rolls her eyes, poking him in the side again. "Good night, Nathaniel."

"Good night, Alicia." They both drift off, relaxing into each other, safe, at least, for the time being.


End file.
